CVE-2021-3156
Actively exploited. CVE-2021-3156 is listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2022-04-06) — exploitation has been observed in the wild, and US federal agencies are required to remediate it under BOD 22-01. Treat patching as urgent.
Public exploit code is available. Proof-of-concept or working exploit code for CVE-2021-3156 is indexed in Metasploit, Exploit-DB and GitHub PoC. Expect opportunistic scanning and exploitation attempts — prioritize remediation.
Sudo contains an off-by-one error that can result in a heap-based buffer overflow, which allows for privilege escalation.
CSIRTS triage
- What
- An off-by-one error can result in a heap-based buffer overflow, allowing privilege escalation.
- Who is affected
- Users of Sudo are affected.
- Urgency
- Immediate remediation is necessary due to active exploitation of the vulnerability.
- Action
- Update to the latest version of Sudo.
AI-assisted analysis generated from the source advisory — verify against the original.
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Exploitation outlook
- Exploitation confirmedAlready exploited in the wild (CISA KEV) — the prediction phase is over. Patch now. Riskier than 100% of all EPSS-scored CVEs.
Exploit availability
Public exploit or proof-of-concept code for CVE-2021-3156 is indexed in these free datasets. Available exploit code raises real-world risk independent of the CVSS score.
- MetasploitA Metasploit Framework module targets this CVE — weaponized, point-and-click exploitation.look it up ↗
- Exploit-DBA public exploit is published in the Exploit-DB archive.look it up ↗
- GitHub PoCPublic proof-of-concept repositories on GitHub reference this CVE.look it up ↗
Advisory coverage (1)
- criticalexploitedCVE-2021-3156: Sudo Heap-Based Buffer Overflow Vulnerabilitycisa-kev · 2022-04-06
External references
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[](https://www.csirts.com/cve/CVE-2021-3156)